Kevin Systrom is an American programmer and entrepreneur known as the CEO and co-founder of the photo and video-sharing social networking service Instagram.
Early years and education
Kevin York Systrom was born on December 30, 1983 in Holliston, Massachusetts. He first learned about computer programming in Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. Systrom attended Stanford University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering in 2006. He studied photography when he spent a winter of his third year in Florence.
Career
In 2005, Systrom worked as a technical and business intern through the Mayfield Fellows Program at Stanford.
After graduating from Stanford, Systrom also worked at Google as Associate Product Marketing Manager for Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets and other products. After two years, he moved as Corporate Development Associate.
Systrom left Google in 2009 and joined Nextstop as Product Manager. Nextstop is a location recommendation startup that was eventually acquired by Facebook in 2010. The idea was to combine location check-ins and social games. Later on, he made Burbn which was an idea that came up while he was on a vacation with his girlfriend. They think the photos they took did not look good enough so Systrom thought of using filters. At that time, Systrom developed the X-Pro II filter, which is still being used in Instagram today.
Systrom received a $500,000 seed funding round from both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to develop Burbn. Systrom and Mike Krieger turned Burbn into a product that allowed users to check into locations, make plans for future check-ins, earn points for hanging out with friends, share pictures and many more. Later on, Krieger and Systrom realized that many users did not want something that is too complicated. So they decided to focus on one feature – photo-sharing. This led to the creation of Instagram.
In 2010,Kevin Systrom co-founded and launched the photo-sharing mobile app, Instagram in San Francisco, California. In April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in cash and in stock. With Facebook acquiring Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook is “committed to building and growing Instagram independently”, allowing Systrom to still continue to lead Instagram. Systrom stated on one of his interviews that being part of Facebook is a good thing because Facebook ‘understands how to grow, understands how to build a business, and has one of the best, if not the best, management team in tech.” Over time, Instagram has developed key features like filters, video, and explore. It also allows users to apply filters on photos and video, name a location, geotag images, follow other users’ feeds, and like/comment on other users’ photos.
Systrom hired James Everingham, former Yahoo Vice President, and Kevin Well, who was formerly a head of the product development at Twitter.
As of September 2017, Instagram has more than 800 million monthly users.
Net Worth
Kevin Systrom’s real-time net worth is $1.2 billion.